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Friday, October 23, 2009

I don't know enough to say one way or the other if the allegations of Jamie Leigh Jones are true. But suspicions are raised just by the fact that she's on Rachel Maddow's show to further sweeping allegations of gang rape while working as a contractor in Iraq. Along with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow is the least principled talking head on the air - and that's saying a lot, given the deep bench at both CNN and MSNBC, to say nothing of the Couric/Gibson/Williams nightly news tele-smears. An additional red flag is how Crooks and Liarsis pumping up the Maddow episode. Altogether, this leftist media-blogger consortium's not to be trusted:

Interestingly, even the Wikipedia entry raises questions of veracity with Ms. Jones' story.

Keep in mind that the allegations date to July 2005. The timeline tracks with the most violent phase of the Iraq insurgency. There was certainly incentive for the antiwar media and blogging commentariat to elevate Ms.Jones to celebrity status, much like Cindy Sheehan (until she was discarded like an old tampon).

I know I'm going to take a lot of heat for this, but this story just sound so.... well.... er ... far-fetched.

Not the rape part--rape happens all the time (gang rapes, not so much, but occasionally). Not the cover up part--cover ups happen all the time. Not the corporation trying to cover ass part--CYAs happen all the time. Not the administration is covering up part--administrations cover things up all the time.

But combine gang rape + cover up + corporate malfeasance + political intrigue and you have the perfect story. Throw in a crusading lawyer using civil law to find justice when criminal courts have let the victim down and you have the perfect John Grisham book.

Now name KBR, Haliburton, Bush, & set the story in Iraq and you have more than a blockbuster movie pitch-- you also have the perfect conspiracy.

What could be more salacious than this? I can't think of a single thing.

It's perfect. Too perfect.

The kind of story the Left can rally around. The kind of story we aren't allowed to question because, well, questioning the veracity of the claims made by a rape victim makes one worse than pond scum. Automatically.

And normally I agree. Rape victims should be off limits. Too much pain involved. Too many memories of the not so distant past when some argued that the victim somehow brought the crime on themselves. That they deserved it.

Questioning a rape victim is akin to a second rape. Or so I was always taught.

It's why I never personally said anything about the Duke la cross case (lacrosse? whatever). But that same case should remind us that not all rape allegations are true.

The Jamie Leigh Jones case is just, well, difficult to believe. In fact more difficult to believe than the Duke case.

I can't say this is nonsense, but it does all seem a bit hard to believe. And very convenient in terms of a multimillion dollar lawsuit against a very deep-pocketed corporation against whom a significant portion of the public is willing to believe literally anything at all.

Halliburton Derangement Syndrome struck the media again this week. ABC News ran big with a story about a “Houston, Texas woman who says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.” The allegations are awful. She may be telling the truth. But beware of the sensationalism and hype.

Ted Frank at Overlawyered has a non-hysterical look at the charges–and how they evolved into an HDS-friendly, made-for-media case:

In February 2006, Jamie Leigh Jones filed an arbitration complaint, complaining that, for her administrative assistant job with KBR in Iraq, she was placed in an all-male dorm for living arrangements, and a co-worker sexually assaulted her. (KBR says the co-worker claimed the sex was consensual, though Jones claims physical injuries, such as burst breast implants and torn pectoral muscles, that are plainly not consistent with consensual sex. The EEOC’s Letter of Determination credited the allegation of sexual assault.)

Fifteen months later, after extensive discovery in the arbitration, Jones, who lives in Houston, and whose lawyer is based in Houston, and who worked for KBR in Houston, sued KBR and a bunch of other entities (including Halliburton, for whom she never worked, and the United States), in federal court in Beaumont, Texas. The claims were suddenly of much more outrageous conduct: the original allegation of a single he-said/she-said sexual assault was now an allegation of gang rape by several unknown John Doe rapists who worked as firemen (though she did make a claim of multiple rape to the EEOC, though it is unclear when that claim was made); she claims that after she reported the rape, “Halliburton locked her in a container” (the EEOC found that KBR provided immediate medical treatment and safety and shipped her home immediately) and she threw in an allegation that a “sexual favor” she provided a supervisor in Houston was the result of improper “influence.” (But she no longer makes the implausible claim that she was living in an all-male dorm in Iraq.)

The US got the claim dismissed quickly (Jones hasn’t yet followed the appropriate administrative claims procedure); the case was transferred back to Houston where it belonged (the trial lawyer’s ludicrous brief in opposition didn’t help). But the fact that the defendants are pointing out that the lawsuit over a pending arbitration violates 28 U.S.C. § 1927 and are asking for the court to mandate only one single proceeding in arbitration rather than a multiplicity of parallel proceedings, is now being treated as a cause célèbre by the left-wing blogosphere in its campaign against the contractual freedom to arbitrate. (Note that two elements explicitly designed to arouse the ire and inflame the passions of the left—Halliburton and gang-rape—only came about after Jones switched attorneys.)

2
comments:

Dennis
said...

It would seem that the racism meme is not working so well so time to pull out the rape meme. There was a time when I would have thought it might be fact, but after years of seeing men put in jail by bogus rape charges, thank god for DNA, I no longer give this the credence I once would have done.It just seems so pat and pops up way after 2005. A little fishy.

I might even be more amenable to these things if it had been a priority for the Left in the many allegation during the Clinton administration. I suspect that none of these leftists were anywhere to be found. Where were the feminists? Its just sex. If there is any group that epitomizes a disconnect on rape charges it is the left.Then you add the Left's response to Roman Polanski and you have a group who have little or no standing. You could say they make the true example of Leftist Democrats for rape. Color me skeptical. This is the typical politics as usual for the left. When one meme fails try another. If you toss enough mud on the wall then some might stick whether true or not.